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All right. A little break was called for because I am trying to get a book done. But one must start before one can talk about getting something “done,” eh?

I’m just about finished reading almost every pertinent address, homily and message that’s come from Pope Benedict – those that I can safely assume come from his hand, at least.

I told Michael the other night that my basic conclusion the dual experience of immersing myself in B16’s words and engaging in various church-related activities and events over the past week is that he is wasted on us.

That is, Benedict is relentless in his call for us to focus on Christ. He constantly takes in the ways of the world, diagnoses our ills with precision, reminds us of who we are and “proposes Christ.” Just as relentlessly, he calls on the Body of Christ to get with it, to love fearlessly, to embrace the “adventure” (a favorite word of his) of witnessing to the joy of friendship with Jesus and to be courageous in assessing its own sins and weaknesses, for the sake of a more powerful, merciful witness to a wandering, hurting world.

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It is a shame that the Pope’s message is bottled up at the top of the pyramid. My parish and my bishop are unflinchingly focused on building campaigns and new programs……………and the people go unfed — spiritually — week after week.

The Church sits atop a huge treasure chest of spirituality and a wonderful, grace-filled set of sacraments………but somehow can’t get itself to just let the people drink at that fountain.

The institutional Church is not designed to respond with zeal to the leadership of this—or any other—magnificent pope, and his words, relentlessly spoken, are for those of us who listen, care, and through our apostolate, share.

Courage, friends! A new generation is rising up that takes the realities of the Gospel seriously, that is less interested in programs and committees than the reality of Christ. At least that’s how I, as a potential convert, see it. There’s new blood that sees the Church as the Body of Christ, not an institution or organization.

Amy, Plueeze keep saying this. I know it doesn’t generate as much interest as other posts but it is so true, so needed, so ignored…at least by my chanchery. It may be that someday you can translate B16 into something that’ll get on their radar!

Amen to what everyone wrote above — and people just don’t realize how frustrating it is to see this indifference to the wonderful words of BXVI, and instead try to cope with “that’s what we’re used to — that’s the way things are done around here”. Aggghhhh! Or, to put it in a seasonal context, “Bah, humbug on them!”

I hope somewhere in amongst all the bail-out-madness embracing the corridors of power in Washington, BXVI’s poverty & peace message gets more airplay on the Catholic media between now and Jan 1 2009 (World Peace Day) – I found it today posted by Christopher Manion almost a week after its publication on the

Pope Benedict On Wealth Creation Catholic University faculties might be full of socialists, but the Pope begs to disagree:

“While it has been rightly emphasized that increasing per capita income cannot be the ultimate goal of political and economic activity, it is still an important means of attaining the objective of the fight against hunger and absolute poverty. Hence, the illusion that a policy of mere redistribution of existing wealth can definitively resolve the problem must be set aside. In a modern economy, the value of assets is utterly dependent on the capacity to generate revenue in the present and the future. Wealth creation therefore becomes an inescapable duty, which must be kept in mind if the fight against material poverty is to be effective in the long term.” [emphasis added]

By the way, he’s no warmonger either, much to the chagrin of the Catholic empire-builders who tried twisting Just War doctrine to justify the Iraq disaster:

“As I have pointed out before, it can happen that ‘immense military expenditure, involving material and human resources and arms, is in fact diverted from development projects for peoples, especially the poorest who are most in need of aid.'”

… as Erin Manning reminds us, guest hiosting Rod “Crunchy Con” Dreher’s blog all the billions we spent in Iraq have merely returned the country to an ex-post-facto state. We Pottery-Barn’d ’em so to speak, via a warped form of restorative justice we rebuilt what we destroyed, but not a penny of wealth creation to show for the hundreds of thousands of precious lives lost and the billions of outstanding VA benefits owed, debt the servicing of which our children and our unborn grandchildren have been “drafted” into as their birthright.) ~::~ O Come O Come Emmanuel and Ransom Captive Israel ~::~ may ring more true in certain souls this Advent season, no?)

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* a political venue I like to follow re: the distributive justice aspects of fractional reserve banking and FIAT currencies (both of which, if you’re a fan of Austrian economic theory as I am, amount to Ponzi schemes on a far greater scale than Madoff’s)